


such fragile things, of which we’re made

by PikaCheeka



Category: DRAMAtical Murder (Visual Novel)
Genre: M/M, Mystery, dubcon, light crime noir, noncon, original characters used to shed light on canon character relationships
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-06-07
Updated: 2018-06-07
Packaged: 2019-05-19 07:15:54
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 20,156
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14869166
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/PikaCheeka/pseuds/PikaCheeka
Summary: After the fall of Oval Tower, Trip and Virus are suddenly in a world where nothing is recognizable, not even whatever exists between them. They begin to drift, and Virus finds himself latching onto someone who reminds himself suspiciously of the Trip he used to know.It reveals a lot about him, and he and Trip are forced to make a decision they never had to make before.





	such fragile things, of which we’re made

**Author's Note:**

> I’ve been tossing the idea around of a parallel to “a sea change” and “the history that produced them”, with Virus meeting an older man who reminds him of Trip, for over a year now. The TRIPDAD saga to the Virusmom fics. It took a reader _______ suggesting it for me to write it. What I originally intended to be a comedic one-scene fic morphed into a 20,000+ word drama. This is the end result. It's not as emotionally intense as the others, but it's still more than I ever expected it would be. This takes place AFTER the fall of Oval Tower, so I did a bit of political world-building scattered throughout to help explain the plot. At any rate, I hope you enjoy!

  **One**

 

The bar is loud, crowded. The island has been chaos since the fall of Oval Tower only a month earlier. Outsiders flooding in left and right now that the island’s private immigration standards have broken down, now that Toue Inc isn’t controlling every ferry and airplane on the island, now that no governor has stepped in to take it over and the prime minister’s been avoiding it like the plague, now that suddenly everyone can reap the benefits of the loose laws on drugs and prostitution, now that there is hundreds of millions of yen worth of technology and other goods to be collected from the rubble by whoever can get there first.

He sees him from the corner of his eye and makes the decision in a split second. He will have days, weeks, months, years to reflect on the thousands of neuro synapses in that moment.

Virus leans forward over the bar as he slides onto the stool, arches his back and purposefully avoids eye contact with the man beside him, the man who looks so familiar. He smiles lazily at the bartender. “Sex on the beach. Put it on my tab.”

“They don’t do tabs here, dumbass.” The voice comes from his left, only as he expects. _Explosive. Invasive. Entitled and assuming. Ready to insult a stranger within seconds of seeing him._

He doesn’t hesitate, swivels in his seat and narrows his eyes at the man beside him. He sees him fully now, takes in the sharp cheekbones, the ghost of dark stubble he’d grown over his sharp jaw since he’d last shaved, the scar bisecting his right eyebrow. A pack of cheap cigarettes and an even cheaper lighter by his hand, wide knuckles and callouses and scars on every finger. He’s wearing a jacket over a t-shirt, an unforgiveable fashion violation. Hair cut dangerously short on the sides and only slightly longer on top, so much grey mixed in that it takes Virus a moment to see that he’s a redhead. He looks like early fifties, but Virus knows that the kind of life this man obviously leads ages men fast. No more than forty-seven, he suspects. He’d been intrigued immediately, from only a glance out of the corner of his eyes, but now he’s hooked. Committed. “They do for locals.”

“You’re not Japanese, so….” He draws the word out in an easy, familiar drawl.

“Neither are you. I’m not interested in telling strangers about myself,” _Or anyone, for that matter. I’ve never done this before._

“Then don’t talk to me.” He has yet to make eye contact as he drains his glass, slams it down. Belligerent and stupid, exactly as Virus expects.

“Do you have plans tonight?” He nurses his drink, rolls it in his palms and leans to the side just enough that he can feel the older man’s heat radiating off him. There’s a lot of heat, a lot of _him._ Even taller and heavier than Trip.

“ _I’m not interested in telling strangers about myself_ ,” he mimics, still staring ahead as he gestures for a refill.

Virus shrugs, twirls the paper umbrella in his drink and stifles a yawn.

“That’s a girly drink.” His voice is rough, worn down by too many cigarettes or too much yelling.

The lack of eye contact is intriguing, indicative. He leans to the side now, so close they are nearly sharing breath. No cologne, only a recognizable aftershave, the kind of man who sprays himself with it instead of deodorant. There’s another scar on his face, a thin line on his chin. A bad shaving accident. A bar fight. Falling down as a child. It could be anything, and Virus finds himself wanting to touch it. “You’re not very good at flirting.”

It’s the first time he looks at him, full in the eyes now. There’s a fury in his gaze that the slope of his eyebrows fails to conceal. "Watch yourself."

He only smiles in that gentle way of his that at once calms and alarms. He can feel the older man studying him, can feel the pleasant burn of another person eyeing his body; he crosses his legs, adjusts his weight so he’s as close as he can be without touching him. He feels impulsive and reckless for reasons he can’t quite explain. _The shape of his eyes, maybe, the size of his arms, the savagery in his voice. Something familiar and exotic._ He doesn’t speak until the bartender passes, slams another glass of beer down in front of them. Just as the older man reaches for it, Virus grabs his arm, only a matter of a few centimeters between them. “That one’s on me.”

The man immediately freezes, muscles clenching and heart quickening beneath Virus’ hand. “I’m not a faggot.”

"You don't have to be to fuck a man," Virus whispers in his ear, traces a finger gently up his arm. He feels as if he is hovering on a precipice, walking down a thousand stairs while drunk and blindfolded. He hasn’t been this reckless since before everything on Midorijima changed. _I can only be so cautious for so long._ “It’s not that different, once you get going."

He shakes his head and grimaces, but he picks up the glass with his other hand and downs half of it in seconds.

“Still the same inside. Not as soft and there’s no tits but it’s easy to forget that after a time or two.” He’s rarely so crude; that kind of behavior is left for Trip. He wonders absently what Trip would think of him if he saw him right now. _Why him now?_

"Shut up," the man beside him snarls. But he's listening, his muscles flexing nervously beneath Virus' fingers.

"Come with me to the bathroom." _Stupid, stupid._ He’s never done this before, not with a man he’d already agreed to play the bitch to. _You won’t even enjoy it._

He rips his arm away, shoots him another filthy look and downs the rest of his drink, but he can't hide the interest in his voice. "You really fuck in public bathrooms?"

Virus only shrugs, smiles lazily and cocks his head, viciously pushes back the disgust and uncertainty rising in his throat. "Back in a minute, then."

He thinks about walking out, just leaving his drink and the redhead at the bar and going home. _Stupid, stupid, what you did back there._ But he hasn’t had fun in weeks, hasn’t gone five minutes without looking over his shoulder or wondering how long his bank account will stay afloat. So he slips into the bathroom, locks the door behind him and perches on the sink.

One of the first things he’d learned to do with his coil when he’d first received his own private account at nineteen was to design a means to scan the phones and coils of everyone within a certain radius and collect numbers. His initial reasoning had been that being able to call and remind someone that they owed the Yakuza money when that person could be certain they’d never given their number out, that they’d even ditched their old number and were using a burner, was always too enjoyable an opportunity to pass up. But he began staying up nights, lying in bed while reading tens of thousands of texts between others, photo albums, calendars and notes. He learned a lot about human relationships those nights, vicariously living the lives of others. Sometimes he would stumble upon affairs and he found delight in texting the spouses with revealing photos and incriminating messages. His voyeurism tapered off in the years following Trip’s release from the institute; suddenly he had someone to talk to in the middle of the night, and he no longer felt the need to fill a void he didn’t even know he had had.

He calls the only number he’d bothered to scan tonight, one within inches of him only moments ago, and immediately unbuckles his belt, untucks his shirt and unzips his fly.

Virus presses his coil to his ear and hums softly as he touches himself. He can hear the older man breathing, knows he has his phone pressed hard against his ear. He imagines his jaw clenching as he strokes himself faster now. So _different_ than anyone he’s slept with before, unrefined and uncouth, blindly hostile. _Different and yet inconceivably familiar._ It isn’t long before he can’t keep silent anymore and lets out a gasp.

The man on the other end of the line doesn't say a word. But he doesn't hang up either. His breathing also never changes depth or tempo. _He’s bored._ It irritates him.

Virus wants to finish quickly, suddenly anxious. It’s isn’t because it’s another man, someone he clearly will be submissive to if he gets him alone. He's slept with plenty of men in the past, but he's rarely bottomed. Just with a couple of people who had sufficiently intrigued him over the years but had been unwilling to compromise. The surgical resident at the institute; he'd liked him quite a bit, had flirted with him as a teenager. They'd met again a couple of years after he'd gotten out, after he'd learned enough about sex to know how to properly seduce him. That one business partner of Toue's from Russia who was visiting the country for two weeks. And the older man in the Yakuza, one of the higher-ups who ended up sponsoring him. 

But that isn’t enough. None of that explains why he’s acting like this, incomprehensibly shameless and desperate. _Something about his eyes._ When it’s over he washes his hands, splashes water on his face and cleans himself up as best he can, avoids looking at himself in the mirror. _If he isn’t interested by now, I won’t push him further. I’ll leave. I’ll go home and pretend this never happened._

He slides onto the bar stool beside him again and says nothing.

"How did you get my number?"

"Checked your phone when you weren't looking. I have fast fingers." He waves them, flashes his manicured nails. Trip has often commented on his hands, to the point where it could be a fixation. _Hands and throat._ Virus reflexively touches his neck.

The motion catches the other man’s attention as he breathes. "Uh huh."

He moves in, abrupt and purposeful, the way he moves with Trip, darts his hand beneath the counter and grabs the older man's dick. He can tell immediately that he is big, and his gut reels at the thought, the anticipation. _What happened to ‘I won’t push him further’?_

He pries his hand away and Virus lets him. _It doesn't matter now._ The scale has tipped in his favor.

"I can make those noises for you."

The older man tilts his head to the side, a near-imperceptible shift, just enough for Virus to know he's intrigued. _Not one for words, is he? Just like..._

He curls fingers around the older man's bicep now. He's even bigger than Trip. His next words are a ghost on his skin, voice low and sultry as he applies just enough tension to his fingers, arches his back just enough. He doesn't know what makes him say it beyond a desperate need to seduce this man, to wrap him around his finger. He doesn't even know if it's true but something about the cut of this man's jaw, the size of his biceps and the curl of his lips, makes him take that leap. "You can hurt me. I like the pain. And I can take." His last few words are so low they are scarcely audible. "A lot more than women."

It's that final comment that does it, that makes the older man suddenly grab Virus' upper thigh and squeeze, predatory and controlling. Virus closes his eyes and already begins to regret.

 

-

 

The man chokes him, and Virus laughs until the air is torn from his throat. He leans over him, sinks his teeth into his ear and tears at his earring, snarls a string of filth and tightens his fingers still further. _You whore, you worthless cunt_. It goes on and on but Virus doesn't hear the words any longer because his world has shrunk to nothing, darkness closing in around him. It's not funny anymore. It had never been funny, not really, the violence and excitement that had driven them into a hotel room less than half an hour before. The older man had slapped him, all but ripped his clothing off and thrown him onto the bed. He'd been carrying a condom in his wallet, lubricant in his pocket; he'd been prowling for a woman only to end up with another man. The frustration was clear in his viciousness, now culminating in the fingers around his throat. He wonders for the briefest of moments if this man will kill him, but then he's orgasming and on fire and the weight is lessening around his neck.

"Figured you'd like that..." he whispers. Then he's leaning back, dragging Virus up with him and slamming him into the headboard. "We're not done."

He tries to scream, but his throat is still too bruised and it only comes out a rasp. _I don’t want this anymore._ The older man fucks him even harder now, probably knowing how painfully sensitive his body is so soon after climax. He sobs then, tries to crawl away repeatedly. At one point he even tries to pull him out, thrusting his hands down to his ass and grabbing the other man's balls. He gets slapped for that, but not before he realizes how much blood there is. Regret floods his veins. He hadn’t realized his badly this could go, how painful sex could be when accepting. And then it’s over; he can feel the man coming in him, even through the rubber, and pulling out of him even in the midst of it.

Virus groans, the sudden emptiness inside of him making him want to scream nearly as much as the fullness. He barely notices when he is hauled off the bed and thrown on the floor.

“Stay down there,” he shoves him one last time, kicks him with the boots he never took off.

He has no intention of getting up, doesn’t believe he is even capable of it. He can’t recall being in this much pain since his years at the institute, when he was cut open and stitched together again the wrong way, tubes shoved into his spine and down his throat and in his cock because he couldn’t even piss on his own. _I probably can’t piss now_ , and he laughs weakly as he closes his eyes. He doesn’t know how much time passes before he feels another kick.

He rips the condom wrapper open with his teeth, withdraws it and holds it out to Virus. "Use your mouth this time."

 _I don't want to do this again._ He's still trembling from the last time, but he takes it and is silently grateful that he's done this before. _This is not a good man to learn new things with_. Still, he grins and arches his eyebrows and looks up at him. "You have a lot of stamina. You've got to be in your forties, right?"

He slaps him in response, hard enough for Virus to feel his neck snap back, tendons sharp and aching. And then he's being pulled to his knees, his jaw pried open and the rubber pressed against his tongue. "You're so obedient. You do this a lot, hm? Bet there's. A guy. You can't do it to." He rolls his hips forward with every few words, so hard that Virus gags, puts the condom on as fast as he can. But the older man holds him there, twisting fingers in his hair and thrusting into his mouth until he's choking, nails digging into thighs and saliva running down his face until he is jerked backwards against the wall. _You chased him, seduced him. You asked for this. You told him you like the pain._ He can feel the blood running down his thighs. "Or maybe someone turned you into this.”

He doesn't want to acknowledge that statement. "Split me in half," he whispers, reaching up towards him and marveling at the blood beneath his fingernails.

So obedient.

 

-

 

They fuck a third time in the bathroom, when they'd both staggered out of bed at once to shower. They hadn't made it, bumping hips in the doorway only to lunge at one another again.

Virus gasps, writhes against him and gestures. _Take me in front of the mirror. I want to see it_. "The mirror."

The man unexpectedly obeys, grabs his shoulders and shoves him against the floor-length mirror of the hotel bathroom. He fucks him just as hard as before and Virus nearly passes out from the agony and the pleasure of it. _It’s too much, too soon._ He hadn’t known this about himself. Without his glasses, his vision is hazy. Even this close to the mirror, if he squints, he has to let his vision focus before he can even see someone else behind him.

And it isn't who he expects.

He's never seen Trip with red hair past the age of fourteen, but he can see him now. He looks like him. The same build, nearly the same height, same chiseled jaw, and mixed in with the grey hairs are red. _And the vibrancy of those green eyes._ He all but howls in rage, "Off. Off! We're done!"

The older man unexpectedly obeys, stumbling back and shouting a few expletives in response. _The fuck is wrong with you._ He's shoving his clothing towards him, slapping at him one last time before opening the door to the hotel room and demanding he leave.

Virus feels sick, vile. _Is this why I was attracted to him?_

 

-

 

**Two**

 

He spends a long time in front of his own mirror with the concealer that morning, but he can't mask the discomfort he feels, and he can't fool Trip. His eyes are too tired, his pale lashes bent. He traces fingers over the contours of his cheeks and jaw. Last night was the first time he’d had with sex with someone who hadn’t repeatedly referenced his looks, who hadn’t groveled before him, felt honored to be in his presence. It’s a strange feeling.

"Who decked you?" Trip, another man who had never commented on his looks except for when something is off. _You plucked your eyebrows unevenly. I think your hairline is receding. Who decked you_? He sounds almost eager, amused that someone got the better of him.

Virus shrugs, noncommittal. He's also never had sex with someone who'd given him a black eye before and he doesn't know how he feels about it. It's thrilling. It's depraved. He's used to having the upper hand and the loss of power is as alarming as it is intriguing. If only he didn't look the way he does. He finds he can't even meet Trip's eye when he replies, "Rough night."

"Huh. You get laid at least?"

"Something like that." His whole body aches.

Trip's studying him now, eyes narrowed. "That must have been a bigass woman. You’re even limping. Or maybe…”

"Drop it," he snaps. _Don’t go there._ Because beneath the intrigue, he’s afraid of what happened last night, of what he’d realized under a certain slant of light. _You just let another man brutalize you because he looked like your roommate._ He’d never realized he was interested in that way.

Trip only shrugs. "'Kay. Wanna go out tonight? A new club opened up down by ____"

A groan. "I'm definitely not up for anything but work today." Work. He uses the term loosely. There isn’t much to do these days beyond damage control. With Toue gone and the collapse of Oval Tower, they’d lost the bulk of their income, most of their leverage within the Yakuza, and only kept their apartment because they’d been smart enough to live in the Old District most of the time. The Yakuza have been regrouping, working to pick up the slack, take over what Toue had been doing, and much of the more unpleasant negotiations had fallen on the shoulders of Trip and Virus. Much of the work, much of the blame. More like the shoulders of Virus, because the fine art of pleasing others had never been Trip’s specialty.

Now he's giving him the wounded dog eyes, turned up eyebrows and half a pout forming. The changes in their lives haven’t affected him nearly as much. "Looked fun. ____ is playing tonight. I like them."

Virus shakes his head, rifles through the cabinet for the aspirin. For someone with low latent inhibition and irritability issues, Trip sure enjoys some atrocious music. Grating and obscene. He'd go with him any other night, but right now he wants nothing more than to crawl back under the covers with a syringe of morphine and forget the last 24 hours. He’d never felt like a whore before, not even when he’d taken cash for acts. It isn’t a pleasant feeling.

"Whatever...You're just getting old." He says it dismissively, but the disappointment is clear in his voice.

He swallows four pills and leans back against the counter. He can’t stop thinking about what he’d done last night. _You're not the only one disappointed._

 

-

 

**Three**

 

"Hey." He's there, in his face. Just as Virus had stepped out of the bar one evening nearly a week later, flicking through his phone and not paying attention.  
He’d gone not to drink or even fraternize, but to give a cautious reminder that a certain amount of cash was due. It was one of their minor laundering schemes, but more importantly a drop, one that hadn’t been as lucrative as it should be since the island descended into chaos. It was also one of Trip’s favorite bars, a hole in the wall with eclectic interior decoration and a lounge that extends far beneath the street. A bar that Virus has reason to care about.

He feels something inside of him lurch, a fragile crack, and he wonders if it's fear as he leans away from the older man. _He shouldn't be here. He shouldn't be here._ He hadn't fully realized until now what mistake all of this was. He should have known how possessive the man would be. Because he's like Trip, after all. _That's why I went after him, isn’t it?_ The veneer of a grin falters as he narrows his eyes. "I don't do second nights."

"You don't make the rules after what you did. Anyway you kind of stand out in a crowd." He's in close, hunched over him and leaning against the wall, blocking his exit. It's a pose Virus has seen Trip use a thousand times with women. This man is even taller than him. Six foot three. Four. He remembers his strength as he bore down on him the other night and he thinks about reaching for his gun.

But he doesn't. Instead Virus gently slaps the man's chest, pressing against him a moment before drumming his fingers. He doesn't want it, still hurts too much from the other night, is afraid of what this man might do to him, but he looks into those eyes and can't turn them away. Green. He remembers Trip at seven, vibrant green eyes far too old for his age. Every time he sees this man, the resemblance becomes more and more obvious, unfurling both behind and before him in such a way that he knows this was all he ever saw. He doesn’t believe in regret. "Make it worth my while."

 

-

 

He makes it worth his while.

They go a love hotel this time, something Virus hasn’t done in years and this man has never done. _You know it will be more obvious that you’re a fag if you go to one of these with a man, right? I’m not a fag; just wanna try one._ But as they stand in a privacy booth in the lobby and anonymously pay for a room on a computer, only to have two key cards ejected, Virus realizes the man had researched this. _A way for us to meet without another soul seeing us._

“I’ve never seen sex toys in vending machines,” he muses as he studies the wide array of objects in the closet’s hidden vending machine.

“Mm, how long have you been in Japan?” There’s a suspicious amount of bondage equipment, and it makes Virus feel sick with apprehension. He definitely researched this particular hotel.

“Just a month this time, got a shitty apartment. Been here a lot in the past though.”

His curiosity is piqued but he doesn’t react. “You can use anything on me if you pay for it.”

“You have experience with all of this?”

He shifts his weight to his other foot. Many of them, yes, but only with himself. _I’ve never had this kind of sex with another man before you._ The release, the breaking down of all boundaries, has been exhilarating, but also terrifying. He doesn’t want to admit that he isn’t nearly the whore he pretends to be, doesn’t care to have the older man know that he dragged something out of him that should have stayed buried. And he will eventually go home and pretend he is not a whore. “Yes.”

Fingers curling around his hips now, teeth grazing the shell of his ear. “I want to hurt you.”

As if that’s revelatory. But it is, not so much this man’s desires as Virus’ willingness to acquiesce to them. _As if I deserve this._ He wonders absently what Trip is doing right now, wonders what he himself is doing, and he makes a soft sound of agreement, leans into his touch.

“What’s the worst?”

The worst is not something tangible, yet still he points.

 

-

 

Virus could take a taxi, but he walks home that night. Trip has always inexplicably hated the dark, hated anything to do with weight, heavy darkness, crowded walls. He prefers sunshine and open spaces to the comfort of Virus’ darkness. Sometimes he takes his glasses off solely to ruin his sight, to see blurry lines and no faces. Life is safer that way, when he and he alone has any clarity to his edges. He does this now, tilts his face up and closes his eyes for a moment. _Stupid, stupid, stupid._ It’s after two in the morning, and this neighborhood is certainly no longer under the jurisdiction of Morphine. Fifty percent of his credentials and power evaporated with the cloud of concrete dust that left the entire island in a fog for weeks after the tower collapsed.

But now the changes in his life these last six weeks are no longer solely of another’s design.

He resists the limp, actively fights it with every step and realizes that he’s prolonging the time he’s away from home, away from him.

 

-

**Four**

 

And _he’s_ there, in his face, the moment Virus steps out of the shower, rubbing absently at the condensation on the mirror with one hand while lazily shaving with the other _. Don’t start shaving until I’m done in here_ , he wants to snap. _You know I don’t like that._ But he doesn’t mind it normally, doesn’t care that they share a bathroom but for when he has something to hide. “You’re going to cut yourself.”

The younger man makes a noise that could be anything from an agreement to an accident while Virus quickly wraps a towel around his waist and pushes him gently aside to grab the toothpaste.

Trip who is now behind him, now touching him, a smear of shaving cream across his jawline and a drop of blood on his throat. He always looks good at his most disheveled, damp hair a mess and the shower’s steam tinting his cheeks. “Yum.”

Virus lurches forward, the comment as unexpected as the touch. It could be sexual. But even as it crosses his mind, he knows what he’s referring to. The tube in his hand, some atrocious new herbal flavor that Trip had bought at 4:30 one hungover morning because he couldn’t see straight, an object of consternation at least twice a day for the last week. He opens his mouth to speak, but the words die in his throat with an involuntary shudder as Trip then traces the bruises on his hips with a single finger.

"It's a guy, yea?"

He's thankful that he's brushing his teeth, that he has another few seconds before he has to reply. Trip had known about his tendencies ever since they were children, but they have always avoided bringing it up. They only talk about women, or about men that they gang up on. Discussing Virus' private sex life with men was always off the table - it hit too close to home. And it's not as if Virus hadn't noticed how vicious Trip was to men who submitted. He doesn’t know if he wants that viciousness turned on him. "Let’s not talk about this," he finally sighs.

He’s grinning in that crude way of his now, still so close. "Ehh… I know you like it up the ass from your closet. Got some weird stuff."

 _Shit_. Trip has a poor concept of privacy, of boundaries; he's nosy and invasive when it comes to touching Virus' things. Virus knows it's because of his upbringing, the fact that he'd spent more of his formative years in a place where one couldn't even piss without an audience, but he can only cut him so much slack. _I wasn’t much older than you when I entered the institute._ "When did you go through my closet?"

He shrugs and redirects. "You've looked like shit lately. Same guy as last time?"

"What difference does it make? Don't go through my things."

"You haven't been adding anything extra to the bank account lately so he's probably not paying you, right?" He says it calmly, easily, but there is an accusation there, in the sudden cut of his mouth as he ceases to smile, in the edge of his brow. _You’re getting fucked up the ass like a little bitch and not even getting paid for it. Pathetic._

This violation is too much. _But you're the one who proposed a joint bank account_. Sometimes trusting someone is a disadvantage. There’s no one to be angry at here but himself. He charges women, charges men to dominate them; it’s only reasonable for Trip to jump to conclusions. “No, he isn’t.”

"You should make him. Whatever’s going on. He's roughing you up a lot." His face is blank in the mirror, unreadable, and Virus feels his hand move up slightly, rub against the friction burn on his back. “Nobody else will want this.”

He flinches, unwilling to even acknowledge the comment. It isn't what he expected, that cold nonchalance. He didn't expect jealousy, not quite, but not this either. Disgust. _He doesn’t want you. You’re only good for the money you provide._ Once again, they are words he can’t acknowledge, and so they speak in a series of diversions. He wants him to stop touching him, but even as he speaks, he regrets. "He fucked me against a brick wall last night and my shirt rode up. It was an accident."

His eyes are hard, blank and disinterested. A wall as he drops his hand and shrugs. "That's nice."

It’s normal Trip behavior. Unreadable, distant, eternally bored and easily distracted. _Except_. Trip has never been one to turn down sex talk. He’s always loved the filthy details, and now he’s suddenly uninterested. Something in the way he says it makes Virus feel sick, an unexpected emptiness somewhere between his throat and his belly.

 

-

**Five**

 

Their third fuck is harder than the rest, vicious and savage, against the door, on the floor. Virus is enraged, delighted, vindicated. He holds him down on top of him for some time afterwards, nails digging into his back and legs wrapped tightly around his hips. It’s the closeness he craves, the heart pounding against his own and the heat and the breath in his ear. The closeness he no longer feels at home, in those suffocating hallways and between those dark walls. An encroaching loneliness seeping in through the floorboards. _That’s nice._

Something drives him to dig, to get still closer to the only person he now feels he can tear open, and the next words he whispers, voice cracked and hoarse, are in English. "You're American.”

“Alabama. It’s a shithole. Even more than this place.”

He’s never been to the United States, but he has read enough, watched the news enough, traded enough drugs and guns to know what he means. It's the life history he can imagine Trip had. His slang, his poor vocabulary, his brutish behavior. Impoverished and possibly inbred. Raised in a trailer park or in an old farmhouse, clothing always a size too small and hair a shade too long, freckles from too much time in the sun and teeth knocked out too early. Probably had a father who smacked him around whenever he misbehaved, a father like... He cuts the thought off before it can go further. “Military?”

“Recon,” he mutters sleepily against his throat.

He has no idea what this is but supposes he can look it up later. “Are you still in? I heard the US wants a presence on Nishinoshima to help the rebuilding...” The island closest to them. Platinum Jail proved to be a bigger travesty than the prime minister of Japan had ever anticipated once everything started coming to light, and there was pressure on nearly all fronts to let UN peacekeeping forces into not only Midorijima, but the entirety of Japan. _Who knows what else is going on there that we don’t know about?_ The resounding question. America was of course the first to step forward.

"Naw that won’t happen. It’s all fake, what they’re saying about support. Ain’t about peace. Everyone just wants the technology and the weapons that freak was supposedly working on here, so everybody in the UN sent over their best to see who could pretend to care about Japan the best while they try to loot what they can before everyone else. All that shit about assistance and refugees is a joke. _Helping_ , my ass. This has been a weapons windfall for the international arena.”

Virus takes in every word, curling his toes in excitement. It’s only what he knows, what he has put together himself, but he likes this man’s rage, so clean, so familiar. “You’re a little bitter. Dishonorable discharge?”  
“That obvious?” He pauses, weighing every word. “I used the money meant to pay interpreters for drugs."

 _Mundane and unimpressive._ Something inside of him deflates a little. He isn’t so much like Trip after all then, is he? Just in his looks, his savage physicality. "Who cares about that?"

"Not me, apparently. But a DD kind of fucks over any chance of ever getting lawful employment in the US."

There’s too much raw emotion in those words, and Virus feels his interest in this man’s history skittering backwards. Histories either mean nothing, or they mean too much. There’s nothing in between and this man’s history clearly falls in the latter category.   _Where were you twenty-six years ago?_ "Now what do you do?"

"This and that," he says evasively. "What do you do?"

He doesn't think they should be discussing this after all. Him asking personal questions is one thing; he likes facts, likes knowing everything about people in order to manipulate them. That’s why he’s asking, isn’t it? Because every truthful word one human being says to another is an allowance made, a chip in the exterior, a vulnerability to be exploited later. He likes knowing everything there is to know about others, but he doesn't like people knowing things about him. _No, that’s a lie. You don’t ever ask Trip anything about himself._ Still, he says, “Used to be a bodyguard before Platinum Jail shut down.”

“More like a whore.” Because he hasn’t given up on the relentless insults; if anything they have grown worse. Humiliation and disgust taken out on the man who seduced him building every time they see one another, decades of self-loathing being taken out on the stranger from the bar who bent over for him and invited him to explore a part of himself he’d always denied existed. Virus knows it’s growing dangerous, knows that it will probably get even worse; he isn’t sure he cares, but the threat in his next word is clear.

"Yakuza." _Watch yourself._

"That’s better.” He's grinning crookedly now as he props himself up on his elbows and looks down at him, raising one eyebrow and narrowing the other eye. Cute. It's an uncomfortably familiar look. The recognition suddenly makes him inconceivably lonely. There’s another face who gives him that look, one that is already growing further away from him with every second. He remembers the coldness in his voice. _That’s nice_. Was he always that disinterested in him? He wonders if he’s home, if he’s waiting for him. Probably not. _He was never waiting for you._

“I have to go,” he abruptly sighs as he rolls off the bed and stands, reaches for his pants. _Why go home when it will be an empty apartment?_

He’s almost to the door when he hears it.

“Hey. What’s your name anyway?

Virus jerks his head up, startled and uncertain. This is one of those moments, when a mistake begins to reap repercussions, when the heart causes an accident, when the mouth opens and commits the irreversible. "Virus."

 

-

**Six**

 

“I need you to come with me. Doc.”

Because Trip has never been to the doctor on his own, not since he was fourteen and released from the institute and Virus was left to care for him. He suddenly feels sick, a sense of vertigo overtaking him. Because Trip is acting the same as he always has, after all. _Cold and disinterested because he doesn’t know how to be anything else, but he still wants your help when it’s convenient for him._ He remembers telling the older man his name. “Why?”

“New mouthguard.” He cracks his neck, once to each side. Nearly half of his teeth are crowned by now, between the fighting and the jaw-clenching, but that doesn’t stop him from grinding them to pieces. “Been wearing it at night again.”

“Why do you need a new one? Didn’t you have two?” The string of words, empty questions and distractions, that spill from him are nothing unusual for him, nothing to make Trip suspicious. Gentle admonishing.

“I bit through both.” He’s sullen, slumped so low on the couch he’s nearly supine.

“I thought you were doing better about this. Are you that stressed?”

He shrugs.

“You have to be more careful with your things. It’s annoying to have to keep replacing what you break.” _Don’t push him_ , but he keeps pushing him regardless. Trip breaking everything he owns has long been a point of consternation with Virus; it’s even worse now that Toue is gone, their income diminished, their medical connections shattered. The institute medical staff evaporated nearly overnight, desperate to flee before the UN’s human rights investigation teams rolled in. Only a handful remained, the few with families or illusions of being innocent, and a couple that Virus and Trip liked well enough to incorporate into the Yakuza. There is always need for doctors in organized crime, but that doesn’t mean anyone is grateful to them.

“I know, I know. It’s hard to adjust.” It’s more than he ever says.

“We’ll get used to it.”

“We?” he snaps.

The tension between them is palpable as sudden horror floods his veins. _We are a unit._ He doesn’t want to think of a world where they are not a we, where they can’t finish one another sentences. _There is always a we and the moment that is questioned, we cease to exist. But you told someone who wasn’t a one-night stand your name_. “What do you mean by that?”

Trip shifts his weight, leans forward and rubs his forehead. “You’re better at adapting to shit. You just roll with everything. You know I have trouble with this stuff.”

The fight goes out of him almost immediately, defuses. _Of course that’s all he meant._ This belligerence is normal. The younger man had always envied Virus’ ability to adjust, to change, to survive; it was part of what drew them together, after all. _You just like what you like but you can still deal with anything, jes keep smiling_. “I’ll go with you. Did you already make an appointment?”

“Nope. You make it. Doc likes you better so he’ll get us in.”

 _Us? Why is he such a child?_ The thought, one he’s never had before, eats away at him.

 

-

 

He yawns, curls his tongue and shows too many of his teeth, those damn expensive teeth. “Got a good fuck tonight, even got her number… You been with a girl lately?”

Trip’s immaturity has been grating on his nerves more and more lately, now that he’s been spending more time with someone who is _enough_ like him but so different at the same time. Trip is half the other man’s age but with the same amount of scars. He wonders how many he himself has. He cuts that thought off, chews his lip, “I’ve been busy.”

  _You should be busy too, instead of screwing around and pretending that nothing’s different. We lost our primary income and we can’t keep living like we have it. But_ you _have been screwing around, haven’t you?_

“Yea. Busy. You should come have fun one night. You’re so uptight now. Things’ll be fine.” He hesitates, “Anyway I might see her again, it was that good.”

He can’t tell if Trip is purposefully pushing him. Jealousy has never been in their vocabulary but he can’t withhold the venom when he spits out, “That’s nice.”

A flicker of recognition crosses his face, the shadow of disbelief or even of rage, before it’s gone and Virus is left to wonder if he imagined it, just as Trip pops his mouthguard in and bares his teeth, vaguely threatening until he laughs, and all vagueness is gone.

 

-

**Seven**

 

The fourth time they meet, they do so at the man’s apartment. Small, spartan, distressingly empty, a reflection of him. Virus finds he likes it, so similar to his own place with Trip. Everything in the bathroom could be shoved into pockets in seconds. Not a single picture on the wall, no unnecessary furniture, the TV eternally on some hideously boring news channel that only chronicled war. The bedroom closet has nothing in it but a few guns, a single suit, and a duffle bag that he has yet to examine, the dresser full of neurotically folded socks, boxer briefs, undershirts, cargo pants; it isn’t the kind of wardrobe the younger man is normally interested in. _Not even Trip would care about this._ But there is something satisfying in its simplicity, its lack of asymmetrical cuts and bizarre colors and style. Masculinity skinned to the bone, so unlike the expensive suits and designer shoes he himself is used to, gold cufflinks that host wifi spots and silken ties and eyeglasses that cost a lesser man’s salary. He finds he likes it, a secretive corner of himself he can only reveal when the doors are closed.

The fifth time they meet, he stays the night, and he lays awake listening to the sounds of the apartment one only notices in strange places. The refrigerator thumps occasionally, the air conditioner drones inconsistently, and the tenant about them flushes the toilet three times in the course of the night. The sounds of an unfamiliar setting, another life he is suddenly living, untethered from the person he had grown accustomed to beside him. It makes him lonely.

The American only shakes his head when Virus finally staggers into the kitchen and demands coffee.

“What are you doing today?” Virus asks almost belligerently, unable to meet his eyes. He’d never stayed the night with anyone like this before, not without the use of drugs or alcohol, not without Trip there, too, and he isn’t keen for the subject to come up. He doesn’t realize that asking the man what he’s doing with his life isn’t much better until it’s too late.

The man laughs. “I got to do a few drop-offs today.”

“Drugs?” He narrows his eyes; he doesn’t want anyone selling drugs here, not on his turf, not with everything as fragile as it is right now. “You can’t just show up and do that. I don’t know how it’s done in America but-“

“Chill, Mr. Yakuza. It’s done the same way, ‘cept the Mexican cartels are way scarier than you three-piece Asian bitches any day. I sell other stuff.”

“Ah, ah, ah.” _He hasn’t met Trip._ He wonders if he will, if he should, what would happen if they recognized one another. He shudders and grins. “Like?”

“Passports. ‘Cept they come with a social security number and a birth certificate and a new name and a whole data drive full of anything anyone could ever want. Even fake medical records. You know how hard it is to fake an American ID now and have it work? They all got microchips that can be cross-examined against all other records, including one they stick in your hand. Like a tech fingerprint. We make those, too. I outsource the tech, use my connections in the US to make them authentic and add all the fun stuff, and turn ‘em for a profit.”

He knows what he’s talking about. From what he’s read, all Americans have them except for deployed military and people working in embassies overseas; they get them removed beforehand, lest they are captured or killed and someone can cut it out of them. Intriguing but absurd, unnecessary and easily exploited. Then again, the same can be said for Allmates, a technology American politicians had openly scoffed at. _Using such advanced technology for a plaything, something only the Japanese would do._ “You make those kinds of connections as an enlisted grunt?”

He arches an eyebrow. “Perhaps I haven’t told you everything.”

“I would only hope so, just as you know nothing about me.” But he does know more than he should. “You stuck me as more of a gunrunner.”

“I do guns, too, but for some stupid reason everyone who wants a gun in this country wants a smart gun, which is shit to begin with. They’re also hard to hack.”

“No they aren’t, but they are pretty shit. All those glitches…” Then, “Was what you said even true, the military and everything? I told you my name.” _As if it’s an even exchange._ He doesn’t know why he asks, doesn’t know why it matters. The only person he never lies to is Trip, and the untruths of others have never been anything he cared about.

He laughs, then stands abruptly, dumping his mug in the sink. Already washed and dressed, eerily perfect in the morning just as Trip always is. He pinches Virus’ hip as he passes him, digs his fingers into his gut and whispers in his ear. “Mostly. Just lied about why I got the DD. Be here when I come back, and I’ll make it up to you.”

 

-

 

He is. He does. And when he gives Virus a change of ill-fitting clothes and tells him to stay another night, Virus agrees. He lets himself be washed along with the pull of the tide. _Like you always have. You accept and survive._ But he knows, with every touch, every whisper in the dark, every caress, he’s making a decision. A step away. The attention is nice, the roughness, the brutality, the raw exposure of emotion this man displays towards him. He still doesn’t know if it’s hatred or attraction, but it draws him in. So different than what he’s used to, the distance and vagueness and cordiality of everything he’s used to. He’s happy with him.

It isn’t until the second morning when he gets a text from Trip. “U good?”

 _He doesn’t even know if I’m with somebody or if I’m in trouble. I could have been dead, bleeding out an alley thirty-seven hours ago and he wouldn’t have known, wouldn’t have thought to find out until now._ He stares at the two words for a long time. He thinks about how he’d screamed last night, how the older man had been compelled to gag him, slap him and hiss that the walls are thin here and they aren’t in a hotel anymore. There’s something satisfying in the fear, in the familiarity in the man’s behavior, the pain he draws out of him and the loathing he inflicts upon him. _No. I’m not good._

And then the older man rolls on top of him, pushes him down on his stomach and growls. Virus arches up to meet him, rests his cheek on the pillow and gazes at the dust particles in the sunlight. Morning sun in apartments here are rare, the alleys too narrow and the buildings too high. He was never a morning person, and still he accepts. _I’m not good at all._

He drops the phone on the floor without answering.

 

-

**Eight**

 

Days pass. Weeks. Virus doesn’t stay away even a single night again, though Trip never brought it up, never even asked where he was, as if his silence and disinterest alone were condemnation enough to drive the older man to behave. He wonders if he stops spending the night because he can’t bear that silence in the mornings, can’t carry his partner’s distance, but he still comes home late with fresh bruises, cut lips and broken nails. _Ask, just ask._ He can’t remember if Trip has ever asked where he was though, can’t think of a time when he himself had asked. He's uncomfortable and exhausted nearly all the time now, filled with aches and pains in parts of himself he never knew could hurt, but he can't stop. The sex is intoxicating, addictive, though he doesn’t dare reflect on it too deeply. He’s already shattered too many mirrors recently, and so he walks the fine line between his two selves.

He spends the sunlight hours with Trip now, enforcing only half the time, and wandering the streets aimlessly to report back on the situation. Who from Platinum Jail is wandering the streets, who isn’t. How many rich patrons have already moved on and how many are trying to adapt to the Old District, wondering if gentrifying is worth it. What drugs are selling, what aren’t. What the Rhyme crowds are doing these days. What the police are up to. The progress of the peacekeeping missions being forced upon them by the Americans and Australians, the Koreans. Who they’re paying attention to, what they’re looking for. There’s a lot to observe. Too much. And too many eyes on them now in an irreverent way; they are no longer protected as part of Toue’s company, no longer perceived as members of a superior class. _This isn’t the life I signed up for._

Then again, he’d never signed up for a thing that had happened to him. Except for _him_ , for choosing to go back to him time and again.

Trip glances in the shop windows as they pass; it’s all anyone can do in the South district. So much clothing. Food. Allmates.

“Stock isn’t moving much now without Rhyme being a thing,” he observes absently. “That kitty’s been there a month.” He leans back as they walk past, as if he’s actually interested. He probably is. He’d even found a real cat once, back when he was fourteen or fifteen; he’d brought it home and relentlessly pushed it in Virus’ face for a few hours before putting it down and making no attempt to care for it. It had raced around the apartment meowing and shitting until Virus _accidentally_ let it out the front door. But it made Trip happy for an unexpectedly long time. _Remember the kitty? The real ones are so soft. Never had a pet before. I like having one. ‘Cept it pisses and it’s gross._ Trip had been a cute kid. It had been he who suggested that they set their Allmates to the natural mode when they’d bought them, let them behave as real animals without speech or reason. He’d been disappointed when Herscher didn’t do much besides lie around and sleep, while Welter became a master at being in the way. Like the cat that he is.  

“It will only get worse. People are going to start dumping their Allmates unless they can find another use for them. They are just tools for most people.” He gestures for him to follow. “You already have one.”

“It’s a good thing we never invested in the stock despite everything. There must be a way to capitalize on it somehow now though...” He veers away for the briefest of moments to study the contents of a vending machine. The attention span of a puppy. “So much tech being thrown out.”

“The Americans are big on recycling. We can sell everything to them.”

“Remember when we fed Welter the American meal?” Trip blurts out.

They’d ordered takeout from a new place, one priding itself in American food and American sizes, which had at once intrigued and horrified them. Virus had opted for a kid’s meal, suspicious of how closely the Japanese equated “American” with “Offensively large”. Welter had been on one of his feline hissy-fits at the time, rampaging through the apartment and knocking everything off every table and counter he could find. Just as the delivery had arrived, Virus had shoved him into a cage and opened the door. _Where’s Welter?_ Trip had asked absently, delicately lifting the bag from the delivery man while Virus replied. _I put him in the cage. Excuse me, you put who in a cage? The one we bought the kids meal for._ And after slamming the door in the horrified kid’s face, they decided they might as well have been honest. Why is Trip mentioning this now? _How often do you think of our history together? Is this normal behavior for you? Why can’t I even recognize what’s normal for him anymore?_ “I can’t believe I actually said that.”

“Remember, remember?” Trip’s knocking into him, jabbing his arm and laughing aloud. “They called the fucking cops.”

“I know, I know. I was there.” He leans into him, breathing in deeply and closing his eyes for a moment. He’s warm and solid and he put on too much cologne that morning, as he often does. His body feels differently beside him, better. It’s right.

“They wanted to search the premises and we had all those drugs out.”

“And even the guns. That was a disaster.” He pushes back hard against Trip now, so much weight between them that they are supporting one another’s steps and waves his hand up as he laughs.

“So bad. That guy even took his handcuffs out before you could find our Toue Inc ID cards.” He’s talking a lot for once.

 _He wants you to remember. He wants you to think about him._ The feeling is unexpectedly lonely as Virus feels fingers curl around his wrist, the pressure against his side increasing as he suddenly finds himself pushed to the side, veering off the sidewalk.

"Speaking of handcuffs…"

"Mm? Wha-" He doesn't get any further, because then Trip is in his face. An experience uncomfortably familiar by now. And the younger man has him pushed into an alley, backed up against the wall, one hand now tightly around his wrist while he touches his face. A thumb running over his lower lip, still swollen from the night before, applying enough pressure to hurt and forcing him to lift his chin, arch his neck and lean into the wall. He’s close, so close; he fights the urge to open his jaw, take his thumb inside, let him stroke his tongue and his teeth while he sucks on him. _Does he know what I used this mouth for last night, what I did before the handcuffs that left those marks came off?_

"What else coulda caused these bruises? You really are a submissive little bitch." He’s smiling as he says it, that relaxed and teasing smirk he often has with him. Then. “It’s weird.”

He doesn't realize he was holding his breath until Trip is gone.

 

-

**Nine**

 

 _It’s weird. It’s weird._ Trip was always blunt, wasn’t he?

After the incident in the alley, he begins staying away again, jumpy and uneasy at home and only relaxed when the anxiety is fucked out of him. They have sex nearly every night, so often and vicious that Virus is always exhausted. He scarcely leaves the bed for days at a time, orders takeout and runs the bath as if it were his own apartment. He stops noticing the thump of the refrigerator, the inconsistency of the air conditioner. The other man never tells him to leave; he simply works around him, vanishing at odd hours and returning at odder hours, never acting surprised when Virus is still there. Simply throwing him down onto the couch or the bed or even the floor and screwing him blind, often with no warning or consent. He doesn’t even want it most of the time, but the one time he told him no, the end result was the same. Still he stays. Three days, four days at a time.

The older man only brings it up once, leaning across the dining room table one evening to snap up a piece of tonkatsu from Virus’ plate. He chews with his mouth open and talks at the same time. “You’re like a stupid stray cat who shows up and doesn’t leave. Just waltz in and act like you live here. How come I can never go to your place? You married or something?”

He thinks of the texts that fail to come, morning after morning, night after night. _Or something_. “It’s a mess.”

“You’re kind of a mess.” An accusatory point with his fork.

It’s true. He’d never felt alone before, never cared about anyone standing beside him until he realized just how much he’d taken Trip for granted. Sadness has always been something foreign to him, something esoteric and rare, something he draws out of others and manipulates but never feels the effects of himself. He’d watched so many others self-destruct. Other children at the institute breaking, snapping after one more surgery, one more experimental drug, sobbing and useless until they disappear one day. Other employees of Toue breaking under the pressure, the expectations, the demands and the stress of being in the public eye every moment while trying to balance a normal life, a wife and family. The men he’d seduced over the years on the demands of his boss in the Yakuza, fucked into submission until he had sufficient photos to blackmail them who would threaten suicide and beg and grovel before him. All so pathetic, those who relied so heavily on their emotions, who were so easily controlled. And here he is playing the needy whore for a man who just looks a little too much like his room-mate to be a coincidence. He pushes his plate away and leans back in his chair. 

It’s rapidly reaching a tipping point.

 

-

 

Another night, another morning tangled in the sheets after a brutal, degrading coupling. He’d fucked him from behind without lubricant, grabbed him in the hallway and forced him to the floor, covered his mouth and nose with his hand and half-suffocated him. The sex is starting to really frighten him in its savagery. He knows the older man is taking out his hatred on him, but he pays attention to him and the similarities between him and Trip are undeniable. A mirror aged twenty years. _You’re in over your head._

The dishonorable discharge nags at Virus, the one thing he might be able to use to his leverage. _Because right now the American has the advantage._ “What’d you do to get kicked out?”

He knows exactly what he’s referring to. He’s been waiting for it. “Raped another guy. I didn’t like the way he looked at me, needed to put him in his place. It happens a lot and I didn’t expect him to report it but the bitch did.”

“I thought so.” He wants to ask more, wants to hear what happened, how he did it, what his sex history is, if he’d fucked any other men, if he’d been with a woman, if he had children. But he asks instead, “What’d you do, before that?”

“Just regular reconnaissance. Thought about doing medic but I didn’t have the qualifications. I guess it looked fun. You got power over the enemy by being able to shoot them, power over allies by giving them life.”

"Huh," he settles down, wriggles his hips and lies half over him. It’s nice, being on top; the older man’s preferences in bed haven’t allowed for much variety there. _We should change that._ "Ironic."

“Why’s that?”

Unlike Trip, who lies almost compulsively for fun, he prefers omissions. "I had some health issues as a kid."

"Nothing contagious, right?" Because he’s ripped him open, made him bleed so many times now, and he has grown increasingly lazy with condoms.

"No," he waves him off. "There was one doctor in particular I spent a lot of time with. He was sort of a father to me. I never knew mine."

The older man shifts beneath him and groans, lifting a leg and gently butting it against him. "I’m old enough to be your father so don't you dare tell me you got daddy issues."

"What does that say about you? You have more grey hairs now than when we met.” Lips curling up softly; he’s biting back a laugh now. “Anyway, not that kind of issue."

"Then what?"

"Hmm...." He walks his fingers up the expanse of the older man's chest. There’s a long cut on the underside of his chin from shaving yesterday, a mishap caused by Virus slapping his ass; he hadn’t bothered this morning, leaving a deep red stubble. It would have enraged Virus had it been Trip; he’d trained the younger man to shave twice a day. _Maybe it wouldn’t be so bad if…_ He shakes his head. "Room-mate issues."

He grabs his hand just as he reaches his throat, squeezes it to still him. He looks suspicious, serious. "That the real reason why you never have me come over? What’s the problem, exactly?"

"Probably the usual room-mate problems. He worked in Platinum Jail and recently lost his job but he doesn't act any differently. Just keeps clubbing and screwing around." Omissions, words upon words he doesn't say rattling in the cage of his ribs and burning his insides with their indignation. He disengages his fingers and pulls away lest the other man can feel their heat radiating from him.

"Is it money you're worried about?"

 _Yes and no. So much more._ "Mmmm, a little. It would be too much of a hassle to kick him out, too expensive an apartment."

"Do you need money?"

He’s uncertain if this is an offer. "No. It's fine."

“For such a pillow-biter whore you do a lot for free." He kisses him gently, stubble scraping his face as Virus turns away, uneasy at the unexpected tenderness in the gesture.

“Mm. I don’t want to talk about this anymore.” This, Trip. Because every word he exchanges with this man, every touch, he feels the gulf between them growing.

**Ten**

Virus stares at the screen, uncomprehending. There are too many zeros. That seven was once a four. There’s a lot more money in the account than there was the other day, enough for someone to be fired if this were a banking error. Just because Platinum Jail has evaporated overnight, become an exemplary image of excess and folly, a thousand razed and gutted buildings, doesn’t mean that banks make this kind of error. They never make _this_ kind of error. After all, he and Trip have always been careful to avoid Toue’s banking services. He knows Trip has lured women living in Platinum Jail into bed more than once solely by waving cash in their faces. The younger man had joked about it, said it was the yen that did it, the simple marvel of using paper money, as if he was unaware of what his own eyes, his body, could convince others of doing.

He. hesitates, finger hovering over the button that would call his bank, would alert him to what is at best an accounting error, at worst a bribe he was unwittingly forced into, or one Trip accidentally agreed to. _Or one he purposefully agreed to, because he’s drifting away. Would he do that?_ He can’t imagine Trip cooperating with any authority, but there is something wrong here. He drops his hand, fingers twitching, and logs out of the ATM.

His first stop is not home. _What if he accepted a bribe? What if he agreed to talk to a journalist? One of those UN whores desperate to understand what Toue was doing, desperate to find someone alive to implicate?_ Their faces were everywhere. The tall, blonde, attractive bodyguards of the tyrannical billionaire’s adopted son. Trip could fall for anything. Still a child in so many ways. _We haven’t been spending as much time together. I should have warned him, should have… What if he knew what he was doing? He isn’t stupid._ He catches himself biting his nails

He knows, that in that fragile space of a second’s thought, when he made the decision not to confront Trip directly, that something has broken.

The walk to his boss’ penthouse is only a couple of blocks away, but it’s long enough to drive his fears into a frenzy. He jumps at every shout, every burst of laughter on the street. _Was this district always so loud? No, you fool, because everything has changed since Platinum Jail closed down. Everything. You can’t trust him anymore, and the moment you can’t trust him, the moment he ceases to be your partner. Maybe he never was._

 

-

 

He fidgets, knowing full well he’s acting as nervous as Trip in closed quarters. “There’s a lot of money in our account.”

“Is that suddenly a cause for concern?” He rolls his eyes. He’s always had little patience for Virus’ moods, despite sponsoring him and clearly enjoying his company. They’d even fucked a few times, not that either had ever mentioned it to Trip. The older man had seen it in him immediately, had gently guided him into a private hallway and touched him, kissed him as soon as they’d met. Since then it had happened occasionally, when one or both desperately needed release they couldn’t find elsewhere. They fill a need, a void in one another, and are at once irritated for the necessity of their relationship. It’s a familiar feeling, one he is finally coming to understand.

“I… Did Trip…” _take a bribe? Where did this money come from?_ “Did he pick up a job?

“He picked up a mark, an expensive one at that. What’s the matter with you?”

“Nothing. I.” He can barely speak around the relief. _He just picked up a job. He’s probably been worried about money, too._ But as everything lately, as every tenuous, transient feeling he can grasp for only a moment, the relief evaporates. _Did he always do this?_ He remembers plenty of times over the years when they worked independently. They had different skills; it made sense. _Yet never even telling me…_

“Ah ah ah… you were worried, weren’t you?” He grins up at him. “That the money came from something unsavory.”

“I think most people would consider killing someone unsavory,” he says evenly, delicately. _But don’t you work without telling him sometimes? Yes, yes of course. We don’t discuss the prostitution. No need to._ Sometimes Virus is out late and sometimes there is more money the next day and neither of them talk about it. _That’s nice._

“Stop changing the subject. You’ve been on edge ever since Oval Tower fell. You guys aren’t that important when it comes down to it. Nobody’s going to sell you out, least of all him. He’d only implicate himself.”

 _Not out of any loyalty, only self-preservation._ “He didn’t tell me. I don’t like surprises.”

“Why are you mad? You have more money and he’s finally showing some independence. Isn’t that what you always wanted?”

 _Independence_. The word makes something snap inside of him. _No, no, no._ “No,” the word comes out more viciously than he intends.

There’s something in his voice that Virus can’t recognize as he responds softly, “Be grateful you still share a bank account. Nothing lasts forever.”

Pity.

**-**

**Eleven**

“We should go out for once. Instead of just staying inside and fucking all the time. That’s how people do this kind of thing, yea?”

"Do what?" He’s staring up at the ceiling, distracted and tired.

"Have a relationship."

"We're not in a relationship." He doesn't like this anymore. The man's getting attached. This is bad. He's not the only one getting attached. He wonders how others feel when they cheat on their spouses, how they feel when they send those explicit texts and photos that he’d come across in reading through the lives of others, if it’s any different than what he’s doing, what he’s unexpectedly feeling.

He doesn’t even bat an eye, only looks at him quizzically and grins. "I guess that’s a relief.”

“Excuse me?”

“You’re a high-maintenance bitch. Come on,”

He shouldn’t agree, not after the mention of a relationship, and yet he doesn’t resist when the older man grabs his arm and pulls him upright. He’ll go; he knows he will go. _At least we already had sex so I can leave whenever I want without the day being a waste_. “Let me shower first. And you need to shave.”

He doesn’t even realize he uses his own shampoo, his own toothbrush and razor, and pulls clothing from the half of the closet he’s taken over.

 

-

 

Virus likes spring, likes the final break from the bitter cold. The cicadas, the only living creatures beyond human and cockroaches that can thrive in the cesspit of Midorijima, incessantly buzzing all around him until he can feel the vibrations in his fingertips. Trip despises them, resorts to wearing earplugs at times, not that it particularly affects his behavior. Oblivious, disinterested in everything around him. And apparently Virus was always just a part of everything around him. He elbows the man beside him, hard, just to feel him push back, prove that he isn’t an insignificant part of the background, and he does so immediately, viciously. Decidedly not oblivious.

They’d gone to dinner, a horrifically expensive place that this man had already made reservations for. Controlling and assuming as ever, he’d even ordered for Virus. _Just as I always order for Trip._ He’d groped him under the table, and they’d slipped into the bathroom and locked the door behind them after a full bottle of wine. They’d frotted, the older man fingering Virus until he’d buried his face in his shoulder and whimpered, twisted fingers in his suit jacket until he came.

“Want to do that again sometime? Next week?”

“The bathroom sex or the dinner?”

“Mm, both.” He pinches his hip. Virus likes how physical this man is, how everything is sex and whatever conversations they have tend to be bored afterthoughts. It’s straight-forward.

“You’re awfully energetic for a man your age. How old are you, exactly?” He’d never asked before, not in any seriousness.

“Forty-five.”

“That’s pretty old to be coming into your sexuality,” he’d never brought it up so brazenly before, this man’s disgust and clear repression, and he isn’t sure why he does this now. _You’ve been acting so unpredictably lately, haven’t you?_

But he surprises him by barking out a laugh. “Yea well. I like women, too. Sometimes I get a whore when you’re not around.”

“I’m sure you’re a real delight. Are you this rough with them?”

“Not really. Depends on who you ask, I guess.” He pauses. “I even have a kid, you know. A mistake.”

“Don’t we all.” But he doesn’t. He’s sterile, a result of the institute. Somewhere along the line, someone decided that the children could be more easily controlled if they were all sterilized, because apparently someone missed the memo that sex drive doesn’t work that way. It never bothered Virus; it was more convenient than anything. “I think you have a problem following a conversation.”

He barrels onward though. “Was right after I joined the Marines, stationed in Okinawa. Some stupid American working in Osaka was on vacation there and it seemed like a good idea. I told her to get an abortion but no luck. She just emailed me once, said he was a redhead and he was going up for adoption, and then that was it. I guess he’d be, oh, twenty-five now? Something like that.”

 _I know. I know._ It’s oddly liberating, suddenly knowing, and he doesn’t care to question it farther. _Maybe we aren’t drifting after all. Maybe it’s the same as it’s always been. The connection manifesting in other ways, like intimacy with the father._ He wonders what the psychologists who examined him back at the institute would say now, and he finds himself laughing, leaning into the older man and howling.

He sees him too late.

Trip, leaning against the telephone pole in front of a conbini, hunched over one of those girls he always goes out with – too much makeup and too many figurines dangling from her phone as she laughs and slaps at him. He tolerates everything from these girls, a big dog who eagerly follows otaku girls Virus would never be caught dead with, garnering sex and affection and companions for his video games in exchange for being impressive, intimidating protection, a fake boyfriend whenever they go to clubs. Virus had always found it endearing as well as irritating, that lack of professionalism – anyone can see him with them, and everyone recognizes us. _But here you are, on the arm of another man, where anyone can see you._ Trip suddenly jerks his head up, tilts his head to the side as if listening, observing, that preternatural bond between them that has yet to sever, as if they can always sense one another. Those piercing blue eyes, so like his own, are boring into him now.

Virus is releasing him, even pushing the older man away. He can’t do it fast enough as he stares up at him, sees that familiar jaw and brow, the crooked grin that dies on his face and the lone dimple, the red hair mixed in with the gray. There’s no way Trip wouldn’t notice. He’d see the similarities, even before he himself had. “I have to go.”

“You’re such a little bitch.” He calls after him; he says it pleasantly, even affectionately. The sentiment makes him dizzy. _He saw, he saw, he saw._

 

**Twelve**

 

He hasn’t said a thing, hasn’t acknowledged it in any way. Virus hasn’t gone back to the man in over a week now, the longest he’s ever been away. But he can’t leave, can’t give Trip the chance to ask where he’s going, who he was with, can’t give him the chance to _not_ ask. Because he won’t ask. He hasn’t yet and he never will now. It doesn’t matter. _That’s nice. He’s independent._

He knows that Trip had seen them; even he couldn’t have missed them. They were too loud, too easily recognized, but Trip behaves as if nothing had happened. As if he hadn’t just seen his room-mate with a man who looked suspiciously like his own father.

Virus tells himself again and again it’s fine. He’d never needed anyone beside him, not until he’d met Trip. He can go back to that life, can’t he? _No, you can’t. You still need someone be your side. That’s why you latched onto this other man._

 _Speak_ , he wants to scream at him, knock him against the wall and beat the words out of him. In all their years together, stretching long behind them, they have never forced one another to do anything, never demanded so much as a simple gesture unless one of their lives was at risk. We never intrude on one another, never ask; it’s how we’ve survived so long. Suddenly it’s not enough, and Virus is crawling backwards, mute and blind and deaf. He is crawling for so long he almost believes he imagined it. He didn’t see after all. It’s a lot easier to believe that than _he doesn’t care._

 

-

 

“There’s a lot of Americans around these days.” He doesn’t know why he finally says something, subtly goads him on. 

Trip only grunts in response.

“Do you think they’re going to end up trying to set up a base here? It’s pretty conveniently located, and the governor of Shimane prefecture hasn’t been eager to pick it up again.” They won’t. He has insider information.

“Too messy,” he speaks in another grunt. “For either the US or Japan. They’ll send a bunch of UN police forces for a while…”

“Until the shitstorm is out of the news.” _When was the last time we completed one another’s sentences?_

“Exactly,” Trip’s grinning now, as if he had caught onto the vibrancy between then. “Once the crime is down then the governor will take over. Just pretend Platinum Jail never happened.”

“The _other_ crime is down.” _Once we’re in control of everything again and the gangs and the vandalism have died down._ Such behavior can only sustain itself for so long; people will grow bored with the looting eventually, and without Rhyme, the Yakuza will quickly dominate all the crime on the island. The governor will be easy to blackmail; conservative politicians always are.

“Mmmm, yep. Just gonna be annoying.”

“Annoying? It’s workable. The Americans are good bribe material.”

“Uh huh. Workable for you, maybe.”

Virus rubs his teeth gently with his index finger. _Yes, yes, yes. Get angry. Acknowledge this_. “What do you mean?”

“We talked about this already, yea? I’m not like you. Stuff’s so different.” He turns way then, no longer interested. Not quite irritated, but done with the conversation. Done with whatever spark ignited between them if only for a second. No flicker of recognition. No suspicion. No acknowledgement.

 _Why, why, why? He must have seen. But he doesn’t care._ Virus wonders how it has come to this, how they can still complete the other’s sentences and thoughts, but such matters beyond that are lost. If they ever existed. All Trip has ever wanted is to be like him, hasn’t he?

 

-

 

He wakes up in the middle of the night, that sensation one gets when they are no longer alone.

There’s an arm around him, a warmth against his backside. _Where am I? Who is this? Did I invite him home? What about Trip?_ It takes him a moment to understand.

His chest is solid, nearly as solid as the man who may or may not be his father, but he’s warmer, a furnace. It’s a body he’s used to, and for some time he lies there, not daring to even breathe. Because he smells good, feels good. _Trip, Trip, Trip_. When had they last fallen asleep in the same bed? It seems so long, an unbearable stretch of time, as Virus finally exhales softly and leans back into him. He feels as if he's being offered water for the first time in years. _Why couldn’t it always have been him? The_ thought frightens him, suddenly makes him uneasy, and he moves to break what fragile thing exists between them in that moment.

“What are you doing?” He mumbles, turning until he’s facing him, gently touching a palm to the younger man’s chest. He’s wearing a t-shirt to bed, rare for him. He usually sleeps shirtless. It’s as he knows he’s toeing the line, knows to be careful right now. Virus desperately wants to feel his skin against his own.

“Sleepin’. Trying to.”

“Why here?” Careful, which he himself is not.

Trip cracks an eye open and glares at him, faintly glowing in the dark, before rolling away.

The sudden loss of warmth is as if a part of him has been torn asunder. He wants desperately to touch him, but the few inches between them might as well be miles, an endless expanse. _When did it get so wide? When did I lose him? You never had him._ Because Trip has always been a feral dog, a transient creature who came upon him by happenstance and stayed with him because it was convenient, but now the game has grown tired.

 

**Thirteen**

 

“You were away a while.”

“Mmm,” he unfastens his tie with a single hand and drops it onto the nightstand. “Had some things to take care of.”

“Lie down. I want to do something.”

“That’s new,” but the sultry undertones of the older man’s voice are already luring him in. He falls to one knee on the bed as he slips out of his pants.

“Don’t give me shit if I’m bad at this.”

“What are you-“ _Doing?_ He remembers asking Trip this same thing in another bed less than twenty-four hours ago.

 _If only Trip were doing this to me now._ And he closes his eyes as he arches his back and sighs softly. It’s the first time in all their nights together that nothing is being demanded of him, nothing being taken from him, yet somehow he is at his most vulnerable as the older man grabs his hips and begins kissing his way down his abdomen.

He mouths his balls first, running his tongue down and behind them as he traces fingers over the sensitive skin where his thighs meet. Virus can feel them draw up, tighten, as the older man takes him in his mouth in one abrupt motion. _Bad form_. It’s all he expects, and yet it’s enough.

Even here, he isn’t in control; he can’t even reciprocate beyond pulling hair and massaging his scalp. _Like I do Trip_. He whimpers, shudders as he realizes what had just passed through his mind. And then the older man is spreading fingers over his stomach, pressing down to hold him still as he begins breathing faster, rapid shallow gasps that are less from the ministrations as they are from the fantasies. _If only Trip were doing this to me now_. Fingers twisting in the sheets. It doesn’t take him long to come.

He reacts immediately, impulsively, desperate to take control for the moment that he has it. Virus is all over him, voracious, relentless, his whole body trembling violently as he kisses him again and again, slips a hand between them to touch the other man’s hardness. _I want you; I want this_. Eventually he shifts to his side, giving the American the chance to climb on top of him; only then does he shudder one last time before surrendering to the exhaustion that surges through him immediately following an orgasm.

“What made you do that?” He finally whispers, staring at the ceiling. It isn’t much, nothing really, given what he had done for the older man, but it’s so different. It might as well be some sort of proposition.

“I missed you. Just…you not being around for nine days.”

“Nine days isn’t very long,” but the last ten minutes have been an eternity, and to shut him up, to end this hideous train of words that he so fears, he reaches up, fingers curling around a shoulder. “Fuck me.”

The sex is slow for the first time, so slow that when Virus whimpers, it’s out of desperation, longing, and not pain, fear. He begs for him to stop halfway through, whispers that he wants his glasses back, and stares into the older man’s eyes when they begin again. Green, green. He’s not him. He will never be him, even if he’s who Virus suspects him to be. And with every roll of his hips, every thrust he feels deep inside of him, he tells himself this. _It’s not who you want it to be. It will never be who you want it to be._

 

-

 

“You ever going to tell me about these?” A finger gently grazing the scars on his back. _Scars from another life._ It isn’t the first time he’s touched them, but it’s the first time he’s asked.

“No.” _I’m not that person anymore._

“Figured,” he sighs, stroking his neck before gently tugging his hair. “Come back to the US with me.”

“What?” He misheard. He must have misheard, pressed against his chest as he is, arms around him. A position they’d never been in before despite having sex as often as they have.

“I’d help you find work there. It’d be easy with what you know. Could even stay in the Yakuza, be a liaison if you wanted.” He’s speaking too quickly. “What’s keeping you here? You must be lonely if you’re always with me.”

There is truth to these words. He has nothing left here, nothing but the scars on his back. Toue dead. Sei dead. Aoba boring and engaged. Takahashi settled into his job as money launderer. Morphine disintegrated. And this man is right – he can work for the Yakuza anywhere, if that’s even what he still wants to do. He’d never mentioned Trip again, never even said his name. Just an irritating roommate, not even someone he works with anymore. Trip has found work without him. _I can’t be a hitman like him. We are growing apart. It’s the natural order of things. You must be lonely._ He presses his palms flat against the older man’s chest and draws from his heartbeat.

The words crawl out of him, crack open his jaw and manifest in a hoarse whisper that he knows is his own even as he wants to distance himself from it. “Give me some time to think.”

**Fourteen**

He feels giddy, anxious, that feeling he had as a child whenever he had done something wrong and wasn’t certain if he could get away with it. Or perhaps not. He’s never felt guilt before, that cold undercurrent, slow yet savage, of his unease. _It’s for the best. We’re growing apart._

And still, they find themselves wandering around a department store one evening, looking for nothing but a means and a way to frivolously waste the time. They’ve had a lot of time lately. Trip’s circling a massage chair with that lazy, predatory lope of his, interest piqued if only because of the price tag, the novelty. They don’t have one of these, after all.

“Can we both fit on that?” Virus finally asks. They’d have to be crushed against one another.

“Why do we both need to fit?” Calm, bored. _Was he always like this? Have I always misinterpreted him, assumed he had more interest in me than he does?_

“In case we both want to use it at the same time. We buy big or we buy two. That’s how we always do it.”

“I know.” Irritated now, or is he still only calm and bored? “Try it out.”

Virus obeys, unsure of what else to do. _Because you can’t stop talking and now you’re making things strange between us. Or did Trip ever even care that you make things strange? Has it always been this way?_ He settles into the chair and presses random buttons on the remote. There are twelve. _Why should there be so many?_ “I’ll just try a minute, then you can go.”

“I don’t wanna sit in it tonight. I’m sore.”

 _Or you just don’t want to be near me, no thighs accidentally touching._ “Sore from what?”

He’s silent for a few seconds. “Got inna bad fight the other night and I needed stitches. My back.”

“You went to the hospital?” He can’t believe it.

“Yup… I couldn’t reach it myself and you weren’t around.” Because they always used to give one another stitches.

 _He did it without me. He went to the doctor without me and didn’t say a word of it._ He remembers Trip as a child, screaming and wailing and lashing out whenever any of the doctors saw him unless Virus was in the vicinity to calm him, Trip as a teenager, still too nervous and uncomfortable around others to go to the doctor, the dentist, even the therapist that Takahashi suggested he go to, on his own. Even just a month ago, Trip as an adult, unwilling to go to the dentist without Virus at his side. They’d never talked about it, and Virus had never criticized him for it. But now, he’s going on his own. “You didn’t even call.”

“I said. You weren’t around.”

“You can still call me. I’d have left…” _him_.

Trip shrugs, winces, and leans forward in the same motion, planting his hands on either armrest. “It’s fine. How’s it feel?”

 _It’s not fine._ But talking about the chair is infinitely preferable to talking about that. “I feel like I’m getting punched in the spine.”

“Is it like getting fucked?” He’s dangerously close to him, eyeing him with a combination of interest and disgust.

The words startle him, and he shrinks back as best he can. Trip has begun to scare him the way he frightens everyone else, the way he’d scared Virus when they had first met. Time sliding backwards. “Sitting in a massage chair? Nothing like it. Don’t be such a freak. How often do you think about this?”

Another shrug. “It’s still weird. You being submissive.”

“You sure you don’t want to try the chair?”

 

-

 

He ruffles his hair gently. _I haven’t rubbed your head in months_. He remembers running his fingers through the other redhead’s hair, massaging his scalp while he sucked his dick. _I want you between my legs. I can’t separate them any longer._ “Your roots are showing. Want me to make an appointment for you?”

“Naw, it’s okay like this.”

“Come again?” His hearing is definitely going.

“It’s okay like this.”

“You haven’t had red hair in over a decade. I thought you hated it,” he keeps playing with his hair, unsure of what else to do. Nearly twenty years ago a little boy with red hair had approached him in the institute, had told him after a few weeks that they were the same, that they should match. _I never asked. I never questioned it. I just let you. I let you happen to me, and I let and let and never reached across the divide._

“So?” He says it so belligerently that Virus flinches, drops his hands finally. “We ain’t on TV anymore so we don’t have to match.”

“Is that why you did it?” _No, no, no. You did it because we are the same, because you wanted to be like me. We complement each other, don’t we?_ He’s falling. _You did this to yourself. Twenty years and you never asked._

Trip stares. “Who cares?”

 

**Fifteen**

 

“I’ll go with you.” It’s easier now, the words, the betrayal. Because now he knows that Trip never cared the way he thought he had. _I need someone whose intentions are clear_. And this man is very clear. He wants somebody to shove around, to fuck.

“Really?”

“Yes,” he says softly. “When do we leave?”

He bats his chin with his knuckle none too gently. “Can you get everything wrapped up in a week?”

A week. It’s too soon, but he knows that every day he remains is another day he can doubt his decisions. He isn’t used to doubt. Doubt, regret, loneliness, jealousy. _I don’t think I know who I am anymore. I don’t know Trip and I don’t know myself. “_ I think so. Let’s talk about work then. I want to know what I’m getting myself into.”

“Shouldn’t you have asked that before you said you’d come?” Another shove. “You can work for the same guys I do if you want. You can do tech stuff, right? “

“Isn’t the ID work a little boring? You don’t interact with anybody.”

“You never struck me as a people person.”

“They’re fun to watch, to push around. I like…observing them, seeing what makes them tick, learning how to manipulate them.”

“That what you’ve been doing with me? Because you have a passport now so I guess you succeeded.”

“No. If that’s what I was doing, you wouldn’t know it,” he preens, narrows his eyes and touches the older man’s face. All ten fingers. “I like experimenting with people.”

“Uh huh…” he leans into his touch. “We create the ID packages for people desperate to get into the country because of unsavory pasts. Criminals and insurgents, but wealthy politicians and businessmen who made mistakes. We don’t deal with anybody who can’t pay millions of bucks, and the more desperate someone is, the bigger the mistake is, the more they’re willing to pay. You get what I’m saying?”

He does. “I can help targets make mistakes. And eventually push them towards your employer.” It’s an ideal job for him.

“Exactly.”

“Or I could be their mistake.” Seduction as blackmail. He isn’t above such behavior, and has done it in the past, but he can’t imagine the American being anything but jealous when it came down to it. _Possessive_. Everything Trip failed to be.

“I don’t know about that.” He’s crushing his fingers now, pulling him in.

Virus grins and lets it happen. _I own you._

 

-

 

“Can your stupid roommate handle the rent on his own?” He’s on his laptop now, browsing plane tickets. He’d said it was better to fly into the US normally, no private charter jets. The idea isn’t very appealing.

“Huh?” _Why are you thinking about him? Do you know who he is? Did you see him, too, that night? Did you see your son?_ The thought had never crossed his mind and suddenly he feels sick. _You don’t need complications now._ “He’ll be fine.”

“You can live with me. If you want to.”

“In Alabama?”

He laughs. “I don’t think you’d do well there. Got a place in DC. I’ve been meaning to get another place somewhere but couldn’t settle. You could pick.”

“Don’t rush into it.” _But you did, you agreed to this. You’re abandoning everything you know to work with a stranger in another country just because he’s good in bed._ He wonders absently what would happen if either one of them got tired of it. There’s nothing else between them, is there? Just sex, a lot of sex and a lot of smacks and insults. He suddenly misses Trip. _Because you’d always thought there was something there until you realized there wasn’t._ “You put someone’s name on a lease and it can get messy.”

He only rolls his eyes. “Nobody actually abides by that in the US. Hell, even my apartment here I just sublet online for a few months. Anyway if we both put our names on it, they’ll think we’re screwing.”

“We _are_ screwing.”

“Whatever.”

Virus bites his lip, looking down at the passport again. The man made a name up for him, but the birthday is right. He’d never told him his birthday. “Do I get everything else?”

“Yea I can have everything else ready in a few days. You ok putting the chip in your hand yourself?”

He glances down at his hand, at the expanse of white between his thumb and forefinger. He already has a chip in his head for the Allmate, a defunct one in his neck from the institute. Of course he can put it in himself. _If only because Trip won’t do it for me._ “Why did you already have my passport made?”

“I knew you’d come.” A whisper low in his ear. “I know what your scars are from.”

**Sixteen**

Trip had coerced him into it.

Virus had felt guilty, that unexpected unease, and he’d acquiesced to something he’d normally never have agreed to. Because Trip has been inordinately sweet the last seventeen hours, ever since he came home so late it was at the time he normally wakes up in the mornings. Slouching off to the conbini to buy Virus the curry pan he knew the older man likes so well on his hangover mornings, had cleaned up the kitchen and done their laundry without a word, and had been abnormally chatty otherwise. And now, somehow, karaoke. Childish and stupid. _It’s the least I can do for him, now that I’m leaving him._

It’s his guilty behavior, and he’s responding to Trip’s guilty behavior. The irony is not lost on him. _We are finally acting the same again_.

“Your favorite room is free,” the girl at the front desk is smiling a little too much, blushing faintly as she takes Trip’s cash and gestures for them to follow her down the hall. She’s cute, could be cuter if she lost ten kilos, Virus supposes.

“You really come here often enough that the staff knows your favorite room?” Virus hisses in his ear as soon as they are alone, purposefully too close, inhaling his scent.  Less than a week now. He wonders if he will find himself buying Trip’s favorite cologne when they’re on different continents, if he will find himself missing him.

“Uhm. I don’t come here a lot but sometimes I come by and bang her.”

He almost jumps out of his seat. “Here?”

“Yup. Right where you’re sitting.” He’s laughing now, with his crooked grin. “Kinda fun in public. You should try it sometime.”

Virus sighs and settles back down again. Trip suggesting he try public sex while sitting alone with him in a public karaoke, a place he has already done such behavior in. He wonders absently if Trip is insinuating anything, suggesting anything. He can still smell his cologne. _If you’re going to suggest this, do it now, while I’m still here. Fuck me now and give me a reason to stay. Make me make you a decision instead of an accident_. He resists the urge to reach for him.  “I’m going to have to be pretty drunk before I’ll sing anything.”

“That’s why this place is the best. Got more than the usual drinks.”

But it makes no difference to Trip. He’s always been an unexpected lightweight when it comes to alcohol despite his size and his propensity for drink. Then again, it’s nearly impossible to tell when he’s drunk. There’d been times when he was younger, when Virus had accidentally given him so much to drink that he’d passed out, simply because he barely acted any differently. He can see the signs now, Trip being a little slower, a little hornier, a little more loose with the mouth, but the difference between intoxicated Trip and everyday Trip is so subtle that most everyone else fails to see it. _Who will notice your quirks when I’m gone?_ He suddenly wants Trip drunk, wants him sated and content and warm against him. “Drinks are on me then, hm? Drink as many as you can.”

 

-

 

Seven drinks later, Virus is thinking about the girl at the front desk again. Trip fucked her in this room, right on this seat. It makes him feel connected to him somehow in a way he’s never felt before. _Why now?_ He wonders if it’s too late. “Why do you always go for the chubby ones?”

“You just think anyone who I talk to is fat.” It takes him a long time to get through the sentence, his voice low and raspy. He rarely says more than a few hundred words a day, and over an hour in a karaoke booth had torn through his quota of words for a month. His Kansai accent is more obvious when he sings, when he’s drunk, and he’s remarkably shameless. _Born in Osaka and abandoned almost immediately._ He probably grew up in the back alleys behind karaoke bars.

Virus blinks and shakes his head. He has a point. “Okay. Why do you like all the weird perverted girls who play dirty video games?”

“Dunno. They’re kinda like you.” 

“What? How?” He isn’t sure if he should be insulted or not.

“Don’t have to try hard to figure them out. They just like what they like and don’t try to hide it. You’re a weird pervert too.”

He ignores the latter part of the comment. There’s no denying that part, not after he’s seen the bruises, not after he’s been through my closet. He touches his arm then, runs a finger gently up his bicep. Daring him. “Do you think I don’t hide anything?”

“I got the kitty,” he suddenly blurts out, pointedly staring at the screen as he fidgets with the microphone.

The words almost don’t register, it’s so far from the answer he was expecting. “What?”

“The kitten allmate….  Was on sale. I’m not linked to it, jes letting it act like a cat. It’s in your room ‘cause Welter doesn’t like it. You were so out of it last night, I guess you didn’t even see it.”

He’s stunned that he didn’t notice, that he was that distracted last night. At least it can’t trash the house like the real cat he brought home once did, though it can scratch up the furniture. He drops his hand, cuts the contact between them and feels the yearning in every cell of his body. “Is that what you’re acting guilty about?”

He bites his upper lip and sucks air in through his teeth, a clear indication of guilt. “Guess so.”

 

**Seventeen**

“Are you all right?” Because the older man doesn’t look it. Enraged, disgusted, but also smug. The opposite of guilt. Virus closes the door behind him, but leaves his hand on the doorknob, prepared to run for it if necessary. It would not surprise him if the American hit him outside of sex. It wouldn’t stop him from going with him, either. He’s used to violent men, had been born and bred in violence, a fact this man apparently knows.

But he only throws his phone on the table, open to the photo gallery, and points to it without a word.

Virus recognizes it immediately and feels his gut clench, his heart seize up. Trip’s profile as he’s walking down the street. Something in Virus fragments. Seeing him through another’s eyes excites him. _He’s attractive, so attractive_. He moves towards the table, touches the screen before he can stop himself, his cheekbones.

“You didn’t tell me.”

“He’s just my room-mate. We work together sometimes.” The words ring hollow even to him. _You just touched his face on the phone. Like you would a lover_. And the older man noticed.

“The financially irresponsible room-mate who you’ve only mentioned once in all our time together. He looks like… If you were a chick, he’d be ours. Looks just like me but he’s got your eyes. And he’s the same age as the kid I said I had.”

“Coincidence.” He doesn’t believe it himself.

He doesn’t even bother to call his bluff. “He showed up here last night.”

 _Impossible. Why? Unless he’s really his…._ He opens and closes his mouth several times before finding words, words burning his throat. “He what? Why?”

“He had your new passport. He was bullshit.”

“He likes to go through my things and he’s kind of nosy. He probably followed me here one night because he got curious about where I was always going.” He’s babbling. Despite the fear, a thrill runs through him, a static humming in his fingers as he taps them against the counter. _He stalked me. He came for me. Not him. Whatever they are. Me._

“Huh. That’s not normal for a room-mate, you know that right?” Then a deep breath and, “He said he fucked you.”

“He what?” He can’t comprehend what was just said. _Selective deafness has always been Trip’s problem. What’s wrong with me?_

“He said. He fucked you. All the time.” He bites each word off.

His chest constricts. _If only_. With every revelation, he finds words harder and harder to come by. “We never… He’s lying. We don’t have that kind of relationship.”

“He’s knows all about you, told me exactly how you take it from him. What noises you make, what you like, what freaks you out and what gets you all excited, where your sensitive spots are.”

“We sometimes pick up girls together.” But he’s panicking inside, his gut skittering backwards and up into his ribcage, his survival mode kicking in. Run. _How does Trip know that? Has he been recording me somehow? Remotely turning my coil on, my phone on?_

“And what? Does the girl wear a strapon for you? He knows how much you like it up the ass. He lifted his shirt, showed me that he’s a redhead-“

“You couldn’t tell he was a redhead? He’s got roots an inch long,” But something about Trip partially stripping for this man, showing him the dark red trail beneath his naval, makes him nervous.

He looks confused, suspicious. “No. He dyes his fucking hair. To match you, but he’s a redhead below. Like me. Looks exactly fucking like me.”

 _He dyed his hair again_. He picks up the phone again, studies it. _Blonde after all. When did he do that?_

And then he’s running a finger up his thigh. “He kept talking about how tight you are, how your hot and wet you are, how you always cry, how you like being hit and bitten, how you’re sensitive. Right. Here.”

He arches his back and shudders, turns away from him and stares at the phone again. It’s too much, the man he’s been fucked by in every way and the man he wants to be with in every way but never has, in this room talking about him like that. As if he were a possession. He’d never known Trip to be so jealous.

“He really never did it with you?”

He can only shake his head, bite his lip. _I want him to. I want him to._ He remembers Trip asking him to go out with him time and again, shot down every time but that last night after Virus had already chosen to betray him.

“He really made all that up? Do you want him as bad as he wants you?”

He nods once. He remembers Trip trying to make him jealous by bringing up girls all the time. Gauging his interest. Bringing up old memories when there was nothing between them. Ignoring him when he was gone for days on end, sullen and standoffish when he returned home.

“He really does look like me, and he’s got that accent. He might be my kid.”

Another nod. _You got it all wrong. He was even earning money for you, noting how worried you were about it and ensuring you didn’t have to work as hard. He was giving you space when he thought you needed it. All wrong, So horribly wrong._

“You’re really fucked in the head.”

“I know.” He dutifully moves his arms, lets the man pull his jacket off and unbuckle his belt, untuck his shirt. “Did he say anything about me leaving?”

“We talked about it, yea. But right now…”

The sex is the roughest it’s ever been, escalating still further as he’s bent over the counter and slammed into the floor. It’s what he needs, that savage viciousness taken out on him, reminding him again and again that he did this to himself, that this is the life he’d chosen in his own stupidity, his loneliness and his desperation for something concrete. _You chose this. You finally made a decision for once in your miserable little life and this was the decision you made._

The sex is the best it’s ever been.

 

-

 

They’d somehow made it to the bed, and Virus lies stretched across it now, staring up at the ceiling and listening to the night. He can’t hear the refrigerator anymore even when he tries to, just as he can’t hear it in his own apartment. _A bad sign. But you agreed to go with him. This is your home now. Not Trip, Trip who came for you, who expressed rage and jealousy and raw emotion that he hasn’t exhibited since he was a child, since before he met you._ He thinks of Trip storing everything up, shoring his emotions in the dark alleys of his memory, a skill he only was able to master when he first laid eyes on Virus nineteen long years ago. Now suddenly releasing them in a tide. He has an idea as to what it means, and it terrifies him. He was it all along, wasn’t he? His life was never about Toue, about human experimentation; there was never a need to start anew once all of that was gone. _That_ was never another life, just an irrelevant consequence of living.

The older man suddenly breaks through the silence. “You never told me there was anyone else.”

“There’s not,” Because _he’s_ all there is. “And there’s not you and me, either. There’s just me.”

“You’re a real bitch,” he sighs, resigned. “There’s an envelope on the table by the door for you. You know how to find me.”

 

**Eighteen**

 

He has the kitten allmate in his lap, the little paws kneading his thighs as he absently scratches it behind the ears, but he pushes it aside as soon as he lifts his gaze and sees Virus, moves to stand.

“Sit,” Virus snaps, pointing at him. He ignores the trembling in his hand. “We are not having this conversation now.”

“We don’t have to ever have it,” he says quickly, but he obeys, sits again and picks up the kitten as if it would protect him against Virus’ rage, so potent in its rarity.

“Of course you’d say that.” But he knows he hasn’t been one for words lately either. We did this to ourselves. Virus throws the yellow envelope at him none too viciously. The second one. A matching passport, complete with a birthday he never should have known, a sheaf of papers, a microchip in a case. There’d been a messy note scrawled on the back of a business card. _Overnight work cost extra 300,000. U owe me._ He was pretty sure that wasn’t in Japanese currency. “Be grateful your father likes you so much.”

Trip stares at him, opens the envelope and removes the passport without looking at it. “I take that back. I think we have to have it.”

 

-

 

But they don’t.

Instead they order from one of Trip’s favorite takeout places and watch TV. There hasn’t been a single day since the fall of Oval Tower when Virus hadn’t found time to check the news at least twice; Trip has always been significantly less interested, so much so that Virus suspects he never watched it any of the nights he was away, as if Virus were his sole tenuous line to the rest of the world. _Maybe I am_. It makes him feel something again, in that unexpected space between his throat and his gut.

Neither speak as they pick at their food. Every headline bleeds into the next and Virus scarcely notices them. Something about the American Embassy in Osaka-Kobe, the embassy who has been dealing with this mess as best they know how, woefully unequipped compared to the one in Tokyo, but they’re in charge of the prefecture, in charge of all military relations along the coastlines. _He_ had commented on it often. The newscaster is talking about the American peacekeeping forces again, the proposed temporary base to maintain the integrity of Japanese national security.

“Fuck,” Trip suddenly groans, rocks forward so fast that his feet lift off the ground momentarily and he buries his face in his hands.

Virus glances over at him nervously. He hasn’t seen Trip as angry as he’d apparently been the other night since they were children; he isn’t sure what might set him off now.

“I guess now is as good a time as any…”

 _That_. He’s silent. He hadn’t expected Trip to be the one to broach the subject, especially not over takeout and the evening news. No tact, as ever. It’s only because of what’s on the screen. _Maybe I should have refrained from the habit tonight._ “I don’t know if…”

And Trip is leaning into him, a hand on his shoulder and a hand gently touching his face, pressing a finger to his lips. “Shh. Just look.”

He remembers all the times the other man had shushed him over the last couple of months with an indifferent violence; the finger pressed against him now is uncomfortably tender and he leans back only to have Trip apply pressure to his shoulder. The most intimate they have been in ages. He wonders what he would do if he bit him, if he kissed him. But he does nothing, he only watches the screen, waiting. More talk about the temporary base _. Did he lie to me about that after all? Is he even leaving?_ The newscaster mentions the Consul for Political and Economical Affairs, and the camera pans to a news room, a press conference.

And his world very rapidly falls apart.

He recognizes the man talking now, unflinching under the lights, the glare and the noise of a hundred cameras and microphones aimed at him, a hundred voices clamoring for him to explain himself. His first reaction is, _he cleans up well_. His second is, _his nose looks different_.

The resemblance is unmistakable. _Again_. Virus remembers a night at the bar, the savage voice of the man beside him, the width of his shoulders and the way he jutted his chin out when talking. He remembers seducing him on a whim, seeing those eyes in the mirror as he’s fucked again and again. He remembers a story about a son abandoned, a childhood in Alabama, a pregnant girlfriend in Osaka. He hadn’t wanted to believe any of it at the time, been horrified that he might have slept with someone solely because he reminded him of Trip, but as the weeks passed he came to believe it too easily, to simply _assume_. It made the betrayal less painful, to think he was trading one generation for another. He’d been lured in too easily.

He catches Trip by the wrist, pushes his hand down and counts the pulse in his wrist once, twice, seven times before speaking. “He’s your…”

“Yea. Not the guy you’ve been playing bitch to. That’s just weird coincidence.”

“An American ambassador.”

“Yep. That other guy though, I act more like him than my real da so I guess it’s not surprising, why you thought that…” _Da. He knows him._

“I didn’t. I mean, not initially.” No. _You had, you had, you had. You just didn’t know it yet._

“I’d think it too if I didn’t know better.” He finally takes his hand off Virus’ shoulder and leans back, sighing.

 _I hadn’t even noticed he was still touching me._ He quickly releases Trip’s other hand, feels the loss of warmth like a burn in reverse.

“So you just hooked up with a guy who looks like me plus twenty years by accident?”

 _It’s too much, too soon._ He’s still struggling to absorb what he’s just seen. Trip’s true father _. I know something of his past now and it’s because he showed me. He’s from that kind of family. He knows I thought that other man was his father. He knows I only fucked him because…_ “Looks like it,” he whispers.

“Uh huh. He suggested a threesome. Kind of fucked up.”

His stomach lurches at the thought. _I’d die between the two of them._ “How did you know my sex habits? What I like?”

“I guessed. I’ve had a lot of time to think about it…you being submissive.”

He isn’t sure what this means _. Because you want to fuck me or because it disgusts you? Because the concept clearly unnerves you. Because we’re supposed to be the same and suddenly we have that difference between us._ He can’t bring himself to ask so he only says, “Okay.”

“Okay,” an echo. _He’s always been an echo._ Trip reaches towards him again, hesitates a moment with his hand wavering over his knee before relaxing, drops slowly to touch his thigh. They don’t speak for the rest of the night.

 

-

 

“So you were rich?” The next morning. It’s easier to talk about that than what they’d last discussed. _Looks like it. He suggested a threesome. You being submissive._ Just an accident, a long series of accidents and assumptions. Trip’s new allmate had found its way to Virus’ bed, curled up on his pillow and shut down, its fur smelling faintly of the younger man’s cologne. A strange thing to fall asleep to after their exchange.  
He still can’t wrap his mind around the fact that Trip came from an upper-class family, a politician father and a mother who could have been a model. American, but an ambassador family. Wealthy and cosmopolitan. No inbred father from a trailer park in Alabama. No foolish mother who didn’t think about an abortion until it was too late and did the next best thing. He remembers a tiny apartment, not even twenty square meters and three months late on rent, eating cup ramen with a mother who gave birth to him when she was seventeen and who never stopped laughing until the day she surrendered him to the institute. _Why did I think we had such similar lives?_ “Trip.”

Trip takes his time picking through the cereal before shrugging. “Yea until I was six anyway. I was too much trouble so he gave me up and pretended I just went to some relative back in Texas. Embarrassing to have a kid who bit people. I don’t think he expected me to survive or end up where I did.”

He’s silent for some time, digesting this. It’s too much, knowing this about him so suddenly. It makes the intersection of their lives less accidental. “How long has he been here in Mirodirjima?”

“Uhm… Like two months, a little after Platinum Jail shut down. He knows I’m here, knows I ended up working for Toue and was probably involved with Morphine and everything. He’s why I was never as worried as you ‘bout us getting blamed for everything Toue did. He could try to get me arrested now but then I’d let it out that he sold his kid to a terrorist, so he hasta make sure people don’t care about a couple of bodyguards. I’m his big secret so we avoid each other, I guess. Weird situation.”

 _'Weird situation' is an understatement. But two months then, since I met him._ It explains a lot. The standoffishness, the irritation, the immaturity, the lack of concern about the political environment. “Is that why you’ve been such an asshole recently?”

He shrugs. “I was gonna tell you but then you weren’t around anymore. And… We don’t talk about that stuff anyway.”

“After your little adventure the other day, maybe we should.”

“Maybe. You never tell me anything. Didn’t even know you liked guys that way. Then you just start vanishing all the time and acting like a bitch. And now you know where I came from but I don’t know nothing ‘bout you, still. Maybe we hafta know that stuff, ‘cause we don’t have the shit with Toue and the institute.” Language deteriorating as he rushes on, more words than he’s said in weeks.

“Because it’s just us now?” He hadn’t thought of it that way. _We need something else to bind us together, because we can forget the institute now. We can forget the scars on our backs and the horrors that bound us together. We can start again somewhere else,_ somehow _else._

“Would you really have left?”

“No. Not without you at least.” He says it so quickly he surprises himself, but he knows he speaks the truth. Because Trip has been there all along, an accident, a coincidence, a feral dog who happened to catch his eye. He’d never been a _decision_. He is now, a decision nineteen years in the making. “Ask me something. About me.”

“Really?”

“Yes.”

And Trip does.

 


End file.
